EP058: What Does It Mean to be On Mission During Coronavirus?

Episode 58 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. There's some really cool announcements coming out of Stadia here in the next week as we're working towards how we, the Church Digital, and we Stadia Church Planning can come together and help churches like you figure out how to do church online more effectively. Not just the broadcast stuff. Let's get past the broadcast. The broadcast is a smokescreen. It's the front door to something far more effective. So keep your ears open for that, your eyes alert. I don't know if that's the right kind of analogy there, but you get the idea. Stay tuned. We'll have something coming soon. But here, let's get back to episode 58. I am excited about this episode. So a lot of churches asked me, "Hey Jeff, well what's the endgame in this season? How can we do church? Like, okay, now we're doing the broadcast. What's next? What's next?" And a lot of churches, I'm surprised, so a lot of churches have started onboarding all of their small groups online, and that's exciting to me. But it also begs the question on my side: "Hey, what's next? What do we go to after we get the small groups in place?" And the question that I really want to dig into is what does it mean for the church to be on mission in this coronavirus season?

So I started casually, I started asking some pastors through some friends, "Hey, what does it mean to be on mission? What do you think it is?" And a lot of them didn't have like solid answers. I even went up to larger, you know, larger churches. "Hey, what does it think to be on mission? Like, what's the purpose? What's the why behind all this? What's the goal? What's the endgame? What can we expect and hold our people to in this coronavirus season? And how can we hold them accountable?" And I didn't get a lot of good answers until I started talking with Rob Wagner and Brian Phipps from the Kansas City area. So Rob is with, was one of the leaders with KC Underground, a micro church, a house church movement that's in Kansas City. And Brian Phipps runs Disciples Made, which is a discipleship curriculum, a pathway that he's developing. And the two of them work very closely as Disciples Made works with KC Underground and a number of other churches. But really, they were the first guys that when I asked the question, "Hey, what does it mean for the church to be on mission?" Like, they gave a solid answer back. And I was like, "Hey, let's get together on a podcast. Let's talk about this." Because the stuff, the heart of what they're talking about, we, the church today, we need to hear. And even as much as I, with the podcast, I'm as much a student in this, trying to figure out, because the roles have changed, the playbooks are thrown out, nobody knows how to manage this coronavirus season. And here in this podcast, I heard a non-technical, solid answer for what it would mean for the church to be on mission during this coronavirus season.

So once again, joined on the podcast: Brian Phipps with Disciples Made, Rob Wagner with Kansas City Underground, myself Jeff with the Church Digital, where I'm simply asking the question—a complicated question, but I'm simply asking it: What does it mean for the church to be on mission during coronavirus?

Okay, everybody, here you go. So who can I go to to figure these things out? Who's willing to like, you know, just throw down? And I'm like, "Oh, talk to the KC Underground guys. I love those guys. Those guys are cooking." And so that, I mean, that's really why I'm coming to you because I want to ask this question: As a church, what does it even mean to be on mission in the midst of coronavirus? You guys tell me, what does it mean to be on mission?

Well, this is Rob Wagner, and here with my buddy Brian Phipps. Brian speaking on behalf of Disciples Made, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Kansas City Underground. Here's what I'd say in response to that question about how to mobilize. First of all, I would remind everybody that our God is unchanging. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Heaven is not panicked, neither should we be. Jesus is still seated on his throne. He's not up pacing back and forth wondering what he's gonna do with coronavirus. And I say that with laughter in my voice, not because I'm unaware of the horrible things that are happening. It's actually a joy underneath because Jesus is seated on his throne. We do have a foundation of joy and shalom because Jesus is unchanging. That means his mission is unchanging, and he told us to make disciples who make disciples. And that mission doesn't go on pause. We don't pause mobilization on that mission for anything. And in fact, this crisis environment is actually a richer environment for that mission because people are now living with a real awareness of eternal realities. Like life and death is literally right in front of them. Usually we can ignore that here in America. Most of the time we can live at the illusion of control in America. Not anymore. Most of the time we can distract ourselves and keep ourselves busy running around back and forth. Right now, a massive percentage of America is on lockdown. And so there's this quiet. In the quiet, those soul needs come bursting up to the surface. And the longing for authentic community, I mean, that is literally the richest environment for Jesus's mission that I've seen in my entire lifetime.

I saw a picture on Instagram the other day of a pastor who went to go buy supplies at Walmart. And of course, half the shelves are empty. But you know what he noticed when he went to the book section of Walmart where all the Bibles are? Not one was left. Wow, they were all gone, right? And so that leads me to this: Our identity as the church is also unchanging. So Jesus is the same, the mission is the same, and we're the same. And we know the church is not a building. It's a body. The church is not a place or program. It's a people. The people God saved by the power of God for the purposes of God. We know it's not an event. It's about everyday people living out the mission of Jesus in every area of life, everywhere they go.

Now, the church has buildings. It has places. It has programs. It has events. But they don't define us. So in the New Testament, of course, the church met in the temple courts when they could and in homes. But when the persecution started, the pandemic of persecution started, the church didn't slow down one bit. We came to disciple-making. They kept meeting in homes, and that micro expression of the church multiplied all over the Roman Empire.

So what we need to do right now is first of all reimagine the church as a decentralized network of smaller expressions of the church, of micro churches or missional communities or whatever you want to call it. And what the church is doing right now is realizing, "Okay, we can't do the buildings, the place, the program, the event. We don't have that piece anymore to chest forward. But that's okay." Alan Hirsch years ago, I heard him say, "If you really want to learn to play chess, you should start by removing the queen. And once you've mastered the game without the most powerful piece, then put the queen back in and see how good you are." So what Alan is saying is that the church building, the Sunday services, the program, that's our queen. And we've been relying on it too much. Well, now we're going to get to learn how to use all the other pieces on the board. And I think that's exciting.

So I just, I feel like we're in this incredible opportunity for the church to rediscover herself as a decentralized network, which I really think is the most primal definition of the church in the New Testament. And that we can make disciples in an unhindered way. In fact, for Brian and I, we've actually seen an acceleration of disciple-making.

So I'm gonna shut up for a minute because I mean, I kind of slipped into preaching. That's a common theme here, by the way. That'll be the second time Alan Hirsch gets quoted as a major point on this podcast. "I'd rather have 12 disciples than 1200 consumers" is another powerful one. Honestly, I have a running saying where if I really like a quote, I would consider tattooing it on my body. And so that is now the second time I would consider putting Alan Hirsch somewhere on my body. So I'm sure Alan Hirsch is not listening, but if I ever do meet him, that will be the opening line. I will watch him probably run away at that point. So very, very odd.

Hey, listen, there was so much there in the idea of decentralizing. And I'm sure we're going to get into that. But I want to hand it over to Brian. Just kind of opening any thoughts as you're hearing some of this, you know, sort of Rob's been a pastor for 30 years and you know, have a lot of relationships. And so just in the last little bit, I don't have to figure out all the stabilization questions of how do I get my church online or how do I get my staff kind of redeployed to provide care and all the other things. But I'm hearing all of my friends that I'm reaching out to just to see how they're doing scrambling to figure that piece out. And it makes me kind of realize there's two ways to answer your question: How can the church be on mission during this time? And my initial response is, "Well, the way it always should have been." But what I'm finding is that most of the folks are kind of interpreting that question as, "How do we maintain what we've been doing on a different medium?" Right? That's true. And to me, that's a stabilizing question. That's an essential question in order to keep going what has been going on. But if that question and those stabilizing questions are the only ones that are being asked, I believe the church will miss out on a huge opportunity to take mission to the next level by the next time the next coronavirus pops out. I think there's more to learn right now. I think there's a different, potentially a better way, perhaps even a more biblical way to be on mission, which includes, you know, all of God's people. As Rob said, it's everybody on mission together. And I think the blueprint is there in the scripture for what that's supposed to look like.

Jeff, when you sent the questions to us, you talked about what does it mean for like staff to be on mission, doesn't mean for attenders to be on mission, and that was kind of your breakdown of what the church is. And I think the blueprint's right in the scripture for what that's to look like. This idea with Hirsch, taking the queen off the board, and the analogy of the queen being the thing of, you know, in the analogy, I'm assuming it's the major service component or it's the building component that really has been the crutch of this and really making everybody in ministry uncomfortable in this season.

Now, I typically do a lot of my ministry, and so I'm hearing from the online minister sides that, you know, pastors are like crashing the party and coming in like thinking they know what they're doing and they don't know what they're doing. Some of them have been really supportive. Some of them have been like, "Get out of the way, let me do my thing." So there's an interesting relational balance that I don't necessarily want to dive into in the podcast, but there's a lot of crowdedness kind of in the space of online as we're trying to figure out how to operate.

Walk me through here. You said decentralized. You talked about removing the queen off the board, which alludes to, okay, there's other roles that the other pieces need to play, and maybe we're walking around playing with the queen and using their influence instead of really utilizing some of the others. What are some ways that, and I don't even want to go practical, but even philosophically, like how could we get other parts involved in this? We're stuck in this model of let's get the services going, let's broadcast, let's get consistency. And I'll even admit I'm the guy, I'm the guy.

That's an intro to a pastor. Don't preach a 40-minute message. Preach 40-minute messages because that's going to engage better with online, and the flipside of that is maybe creating more of a consumerism model, hoping that they have some sort of discipleship structure in place to feed into. Maybe they do, maybe they don't.

How do we utilize some of these other pieces today in coronavirus? What's the strength of some of these other pieces today? Okay, look, let me talk about Brian and I. We could unpack, I think, two pivots that every church could make, and then actually three practical strategies.

Pivot number one is pivot to small groups online. Harder than you're pivoting to streaming services online. So more than great content, what people need right now is great community. And so I understand. I've pastored in large churches for most of my adult life. I understand getting the services online. That's a part of stabilizing, but I think it's not as important as moving whatever micro-expressions of the church you have—if it's Sunday school groups, if it's small groups, if it's missional communities, whatever you call it—moving those to an online platform like Zoom is actually the top priority. Because fundamentally, the church is a family, and that family has to be embodied. And right now, the only way to embody it is online. But we are so blessed to be alive at this time because the technology facilitates the community in a phenomenal way.

The second thing I would say then, second pivot, is to pivot your current staff to the top priority being the equipping of the leaders who are leading those micro-expressions in the online space. And what we'd like to just unpack for you is, you know, three practical ways of that happening—how these pivots are being embodied here in Kansas City, both through Disciples Made and through the Kansas City Underground.

So with the Underground, we're a network of micro churches in the city. Kansas City Underground, we're just a year old. We hit 19 micro churches this week, which is amazing. And because we are a decentralized network of micros, all we had to do was upgrade our Zoom account, and now every micro church has access to Zoom, and they are actually increasing. Like, they're doubling the amount of community and connection from what our usual rhythms are.

And last night we met with our micro church family online, and it was amazing. The depth of conversation, the depth of Bible engagement, the accountability on people writing "I will" statements—like, what the Spirit of God is saying to them right now, and they're gonna write "I will" statements. Here's how I will live it out. You know, the gathering of prayer requests and praying over one another. I mean, we were there for 90 minutes, and it just flew by. You know, and we've also seen that our equipping gathering, which is typically something we've done in person where we gather all the missionaries and the leaders of the micro churches—we typically gathered them in person for training. When we moved our equipping gathering online to Zoom, and we have the highest attendance we've ever had—we only had 100 percent attendance of all of our leaders in the entire Underground. We were able to do the exact type of equipping that we do in person because we could get people into breakout groups, and we were able to open up the floor for people to speak and contribute, and so forth.

So just in an analogy, I mean, it'd be like in a normal church: get all your small groups online, make that your top priority. Take your current staff, and every micro church leader in the Underground has a coach. So it's like your staff now each have four to six—however many small groups you have—like, their number one job is to coach the small group leaders. You know, and I think what we're seeing is actually an acceleration of both new disciples and depth of community in our current communities by a factor of ten. I mean, people are leaning in harder than they've ever leaned in, and they're feeling a sense of family deeper than they've ever felt it before.

Another practical thing that we're doing, and then I'm gonna hand out to Brian, is we use a tool called Discovery Bible Study, which is a very simple form of Bible engagement that's built around open questions—open-ended questions. Simple ones like: What is this passage tell me about God? What does it tell me about people in general? What is it saying to me, and how could I practice that? And you write an "I will" statement. And then the last question is: Who could you share this with? And we teach people to live like missionaries in their neighborhood or whatever their relational context is. And when people start showing spiritual interest, invite them to a meal and a Discovery Bible Study.

Well, right now, because of the pandemic, we've seen an explosion in Discovery Bible Studies. They're just being hosted online. And this week alone, there's been four new Discovery Bible Studies that were launched in the first two days. What is today? I mean, remember, for Discovery Bible Study started, and the way our people are doing it is they'll either through the Nextdoor app or through Facebook—one person actually printed a letter and took it out to all their neighbors and put it on their doorstep. They basically say: We're in a time of crisis. We need our neighbors like never before. If you'd like to meet online at this time, here's the link, and we're just gonna catch up on how we're doing. And then I—we're also gonna look to the words of Jesus to find comfort in this time. And I'm not gonna preach. We're gonna have a conversation about it. Here's the questions we'll discuss. We're averaging a 90 percent success rate. Like, 90 percent of the people that are being invited to the Discovery Bible Studies online—that's strictly from like an email, a letter, a physical something like that connecting with online. So, and people are engaging with that, even without the physical interaction. They're digging in and having kind of sounds like life-altering conversations, or at least being open to an idea of a conversation about Jesus.

Like, how do you—so how do you empower people? Because these are volunteers who are doing this. This isn't staff who are doing this. So like, how do you empower a person with the confidence and the wisdom to have that level of a conversation? To come up with the idea of, hey, like, let me share with my neighbor? Let me share with people? Let me do an idea like this? How did you—how did you cast that vision to them?

I didn't. If you think God did, I'm gonna do, like, you know, Jesus juke right here on the podcast. We've been teaching our people these simple tools like Discovery Bible Study. What's great about Discovery Bible Studies is like, all you need is the Bible and the Holy Spirit and five questions. And when we—and we can train people on how to do, how to facilitate a Discovery Bible Study, about 15 minutes. Like, we teach them things like: Okay, don't, as the facilitator, don't over-talk. Don't start preaching. Like, offer your idea, but make it a couple sentences, and give space for other people to share. Another thing we'll say is: If someone starts talking about like Deepak Chopra, when he says about it, or Oprah Winfrey, just say, "Oh, we're just gonna stay in this text. Like, thank you for that observation. Really appreciate it, but let's look at what Jesus is saying in this text." You know, so this—you can train somebody simply in 15 minutes to do Discovery Bible Study. And then we, for example, we posted like—we've shared an example letter. You know, like, here's the letter that Gary took around to his neighborhood, and then here's the post that Bree put up on the Nextdoor app. So just tweak it, you know what I mean? And then they've got a coach. So the coach is checking in with them online. How'd that go? Like, you have questions? How can I help you? And our equipping gathering is continuing online, so they're continuing to get further training and so forth. But I can be great for you to talk about like what's happening with more deeper long-term disciple-making. We've continued that unhindered as well.

Yeah, and it really, to me, gets to the heart of the question that Jeff asked there: Is like, how do these people get the confidence to do that? You know, I can add the words: Where did they sense the permission to do that? Where were they ever given a card that says, "You get to play spiritual influencer now, and not just spiritual recipient"? You know, those are all loaded in. And you know, to me, the short answer is through intentional disciple-making. That is leadership development on the backend, as I'll say that a different way.

A lot of times we define leadership development as training to do a particular role within the church—a volunteer role. So our leadership development isn't a generic "how to become a more powerful spiritual influence" or "a servant leader the way that Jesus led and taught his disciples"—to go from being, you know, fishers of fish to fishers of people, that would be the rock on which the church was built. We've kind of minimized this concept of leadership development down to: Here's how to be a good youth leader. Here's how to be a good small group leader. Here's how to do that. It's more utilitarian than holistic.

And so one big shift that I made about ten years ago is: I'm going to quit trying to define how people should lead, and teach them to become dependent on the Spirit for how to lead through the Spirit influence in them. And one of the big aha moments ten years ago was: I cannot get that done on a weekly basis. Small groups were great, but they were not great at transforming people to that level of influencer. You know, some people are going to be that level of influencer because that's just the way God's made them—the entrepreneur is stick there, there are self-initiators, all these are the things. And yeah, I didn't want it to be an accidental, you know, you know, small percentage of people that accelerated to that level of influence. I thought we could easily hit 65, 75, 85 percent of these people that are following Christ and help them do that. Hundred percent? Four hundred percent? I believe the Spirit has given the tools to do it, but I think we can do better than the three or four percent that we're doing right now.

And so what I realized was that's a daily thing. You know, Jesus didn't say, "Hey, guys, we'll meet on Mondays, and we'll study the Torah, and grab a lot day talk for about an hour and a half, and then I'll see you next Monday. Follow me." And let's walk. You know, forgive the tone, but this is kind of a self-critique. You know, I mean, I—when I started to walk in a different way and realize I was not getting done the things I wanted to get done—this has been a self-critique since. Oh, I hope you hear that. I've lumped myself into that critique. Jesus did it on a daily. I knew there's no way in the world I could get people to engage in a daily, like, "Let's meet Monday morning, and then Tuesday morning, and then Wednesday morning, and then Thursday morning, and then Friday," to do this thing called pursuing Jesus together. And so I knew that there was going to be a synthesis required. Ten years ago, a synthesis required between online daily activity on purpose with a particular group of people—eight to twelve, smaller if needed. I wouldn't go much bigger—small group type of size that was intentional in their daily development together, and then intentional in our weekly gathering together.

And so Disciples Made, it really is a composite of four experiences that leverage that synthesized effort at the daily online interactions. It's like YouVersion and Facebook and GroupMe all put together into one app. It's our app that helps people read Scripture, engage Scripture. Like Rob said, you know, in the Discovery Bible Study, you're asking the questions: What is Jesus teaching me? And what am I going to do about it? The one part that DBS offers, the Disciples Made...

Does as well is those answers to the "I will stay" and "I believe" statements get recorded and your triad people actually get to see that and hold you accountable to that? And like when a Facebook app, they're you know, commenting on us and I love this man, how did it go? Tell me. I'm praying for you as you apologize to your daughter, whatever it is. So this daily activity and then they're reading chapters on spiritual influencing to prepare them to really become better influencers. And when we gather each week, we're discussing those types of things as well as the development that we're making in our life as far as character formation is concerned, as far as understanding our the way God's wired us to influence the world through the gifts that he's given us and the calling he's given on us to bless our neighbors and to just make a difference when we live, work, learn, and play.

And here's what's cool. My I had my meeting this morning at 5:30. 100% of the people were there. We are completely unhindered because the activity, the daily activity, happens online, which has gone unhindered. My particularly leaders made group has been meeting online. We've got folks, you know, folks from all over the country and even in Canada that are a part of my leaders made group now, and it's completely unhindered. Even when I had localized groups that would normally meet in the coffee shop, I've done that for ten years here. A nice storm came to Kansas City, you hop on Zoom, and there's some tremendous advantages to that. So when we started to develop people that way, on the daily online and in person, either online or you know, in real life, virtual real life, that's when the real significant transformation started to happen. That's when their confidence grew. That's when their sense of permission, not just permission, but this is your calling, yeah, your masterpiece mission, this is the reason you get up in the morning. Now it's not what they need. Confidence, all they need is Rob's, that is just that coach to just encourage them along the way to kind of rebuff up that, that sends a confidence that they need it, that they, they just want to, they're unleashed man, and it's beautiful in this.

So here's here's the tension that I feel. So Ed Stetzer is on the podcast here within the past month or so. Jeff, we need a third thing. Look, the weekend service is awesome at serving this point, you know. Eric Geiger writes this book, Simple Church. It just need to be, you know, one more thing. Let's boil it all down and into small groups. We're really kind of missing that, that next level, that deep Bible exposure, really missing that, that the thing that's really gonna bring about disciple-making. So in Ed's point, he's like, let's bring back Sunday school. I don't know what Sunday school is the thing, but ultimately what Ed was pushing was was for the one more thing. I bring on Daniel M, who's a friend of Ed's, you know, actually I think they both at one point worked that life way together and involved a number of things. And Daniel is like, hey Jeff, discipleship is a destination. It's not a process. It's not gonna, the one thing's not going to help you get there. The third thing's not going to help you get there. It's this general process and movement in it, in a general direction, because you never actually get to the end of it. There's no home plate on the Rick Warren thing. But so we're in this mixed culture. Churches have small groups. They have these things that that already exist. Is are we, are you advocating for a different thing, another thing? How do we balance an existing church structure and to get to the point of what you're describing?

I'll jump on this, Robbie. This is one of the things actually learned from Robbie. He articulated it. I had already been kind of leveraging it, but he I take that it in a way to make sense. No, it's which one is the Queen? Which piece on your chessboard is the Queen, and which ones are the supporting cast? And for a lot of churches, the Queen is the weekend service, and other things like small groups and staff and other things are supporting services to really make that happen. And that's okay, you know, that's not that's not a necessarily a bad model. But what I had already done as a discipleship guy at a large church, as I was letting the weekend service serve the disciple-making efforts, that was a place that I could invite people to start leading a small group, not because that was the end zone, because if they would self-identify himself as a leader, I could put a volunteer coach, you know, to be there to be their support, their advocate, to be the resource. And then that person wasn't just there to provide that resource. That person was there to see whether or not that person was ready to be discipled and brought forward, forward and further. And so to me, that's the Queen at the church where we were apart. Disciple-making was was the Queen, and the weekend service was the supporting staff to basically gather a lot of people that we could identify and start to raise up and then kind of remobilize in the various ways that that's been done in the spirit. Got to write that script, and that's been powerful. We've had people, we had a volunteer staff of over 40 coaches and team leaders in our in our small group model. We had people going down, starting 501c3s. I mean, the great tool, but it to me it's all depend on which, how do you prioritize which which part of the chessboard service? Which, yeah, you know, there's a couple things that triggered in my mind, Jeff. One was for Jesus, the top priority was his 12, and he gave the majority of his life to develop 12 for three and a half years. So it actually was the discipleship journey was actually a limited duration journey. Now he was sending the spirit, but there was a certain time of training that Jesus invested in them so that they would then do the same thing with others and not being this ongoing codependent relationship with a person or a program. And I think until churches rediscovered that is the primary thing, which is what Brian was talking about, you can actually use your weekend services as a fishing pond or disciple makers define 12 and to begin to invest in them. And one of our experiences, it's called Fowler's made. It's a six-month journey, and you're going to learn how to grow in character and calling, which is basically fruitless spirit and gifts to the spirit. We're going to teach you the habits so that you know how to partner with the spirit to grow and character and calling. And we've structured it in a way words shared leadership. So in the beginning, I'm leading, but over time, everybody in this group is leading. So we're meeting weekly, but it's not just me leading every week. It's eventually everybody's leading. So you're learning how to actually disciple others as you're being discipled. And here's the crazy thing, Jeff. This thing's been running for seven years now in Kansas City. We're averaging at 30% reproduction rate. 30% of the people who go through Fowler's made actually make other disciples. And for me, like when we were at a Westside Family Church, large mega church here in Kansas City, like that was the most important thing happening at Westside Family Church because it was actually making disciples who could make disciples. So that is literally job one according to Jesus. And in the underground, it's the same thing for me. Like, we, everything we do is about raising up Pete. For us, it's the birthright of every child of God to be a missionary and disciple maker. Let's do that on your back, and you're now on the list. My wife will never let any of this happen, but you just fade it with that. So congratulations. And Jim Putman says this, and I've repeated this thousands of times since I heard him say it: we don't just need the message of Jesus. We need the methods. Wow. We can't improve on Jesus making methods. So one of the things I say to church leaders a lot is if you want to begin the disciple-making journey, find your 12 and actually disciple them. And then you do it for a limited duration amount of time, like Jesus did, and then they need to be unleashed to go make disciples. So you have to show them how to do this in a way where they can do it, you know, and and it's actually, you know, these great disciple-making movements that are exploding around the world, most of them are not as educated as we are. Many of them are illiterate. Most of them don't have the access to financial resources that we have. You don't need to be like educated, rich, and a super leader to do this stuff, you know. And so I would encourage people if they listen to this podcast and you're you're interested, you know, go to disciples made dot com, and you'll see a good overview of the different intentional disciple-making environments we've created. I feel like if if churches can use the current structures as a fishing pond to train disciple makers and make it become a disciple-making factory, that's not dependent, though. It can't be dependent on going to the weekend service or attending, you know, a program. It's got to be highly relational and reproducible by the average person because that's what Jesus did.

Let's let's spin it and get a little practical here. This is this is great stuff, and in the idea of the twelve, utilizing the methods of Jesus towards that, I love that. So I'm at a church, hypothetically. I I work with churches all the time that that are asking these questions and enter and are feeling this tension programmatically, mission models. They understand what we're talking about. They understand that that's the desire. They maybe even understand the biblical calling that that's obedience of Christ and to do these things. I think more people recognize these the disconnect here than I think I've even realized a couple years ago. They know, whether they know there's a disconnect, they don't know how to take the step because oftentimes maybe it's a guy who's three or four, you know, steps down the food chain. It's not the leader. You're unable to, you know, get the influence up. Or or maybe there's a desire to with leadership, but the overall church, even the staff, they're not at a level, never mind the people understanding the level of being on mission that you're describing. The staff don't even really understand that. How do you take in this coronavirus season, what steps can we take to maybe utilize this opportunity of coronavirus to change culture, to take some steps? What advice would you take, maybe a newbie church, a church that's been existing for a while but wants to change culture? How can they be intentional in this season now to take steps to make a better tomorrow for them, more aligned to what you're describing in Scripture? What do you guys think with that? But in the terms of Jesus, he had, you know, what he knew when he was thirty, about two and a half, three and a half years to plant a seed that would literally change the world. So what did he do? He went to Jerusalem. He did a huge, you know, mailer, and he put up a big tent and a great big, wait a minute, you're laughing. He went to the rural area far away from Jerusalem, Galilee, and he found the least likely, and he poured Kingdom DNA into their souls on purpose. As Rob said, with the limited duration, the only component that I would add to what Rob said is he had a particular end zone in mind. He had a defined set of of criteria that he needed his his disciples to have in order to be graduated. You know, look, you're no longer my disciples. I now call you friends. Like, what is the gap between disciple and friend? How do I know I've gotten here? But he knew that he'd gotten him here. And interestingly, it was right as he to her made his biggest, you know, blow out mistake, denying Jesus. Jesus comes back, Rena states him, and then says, on this new buddy, I mean, take the...

Lead it's on you now. Feed my sheep. And so your question is, what would they do? I mean, a lot of people are looking for the great big shift. Why in the world would you do a great big shift if Jesus didn't? Jesus just said, "I'm gonna start new."

So let me take it off of Jesus. Take it back to where I was about ten years ago. I had gone to countless—like so many people are watching this podcast—have been to countless conferences, listen to podcasts, they watch, they've read books, and the message that they've heard over and over and over again, but not been able to properly step into is: you need to develop leaders. You need to develop leaders. You need to develop leaders. You need to quit doing it all. You need to move from worker to equipper, and then equipper to multiplier.

And I listen to that and I felt smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller every year. I went back and heard the same thing. I had conviction that every one of those things. I went back to the church, but the plates were going so fast. What did I do? I kept doing the work and not developing the leaders.

Well, there's a lot of meetings being canceled. There's a lot of responsibilities. There's a lot of travel time cut way down that you can now save and redirect and redeploy. And I think, you know, whether it's our tools to develop leaders or someone else's tools, and there's a great set of resources out today that have never been there before to really start developing spiritual leaders and influencers. Now's the time to do it. Like, you've got two extra hours a week? Do it. Pick twelve. Take it the way Jesus did. Pray for those people. He prayed at least overnight. We got to pray for at least two weeks. If Jesus took—you know, it took an overnight—we ought to pray for at least two weeks. And who are those people that he wants us to invest in? Them. And make part of that investment into them be a requirement of them to help share the leadership burden that you're carrying. That's how it works. That's the way Jesus did it. He says, "I'm gonna go, you know, grab a cup, grab a latte, and study the Torah. You're gonna go with me to actually fish for people." He got on him a little bit, then he sent him out, and then he brought him back in.

So I would—I would pierce them. Here's the quick answer for that, Jeff. The first thing that I did when I realized that, you know, micro no virus kind of a situation ten years ago, was I was no longer the lead pastor. I was the discipleship guy. And Jesus basically sat down in my car with me and said, "You know all those conferences you've been to? You know that guilt you experienced about not developing leaders? Well, here's the deal: if you don't develop leaders, I consider that what you've done is failure."

Jesus is a gentleman. He doesn't talk like that, but that's the way I received it in my type-A, Indiana Graham filter. Yeah, and you know, for what it's worth, I've been told over and over, but he really did. And I was absolutely convicted to the core. You know, the first thing I did was I repented. I repented for years lost because I just did work, and I was the center of that work. Never depended on me. And that work fed me. I know it changed other people, but I hadn't wasted time. I could have been influencing thousands by that time, and I was still in the hundreds.

So I actually had to repent. And the second thing that I did, Jeff—the second thing I did is I admitted I didn't know how. I had led seminars in my denomination about how to multiply, but could you see that on my resume? No. I added really well, but I had not systemically multiplied. And I had to get a new set of tools. And I chose obedience over competency because competency wasn't cutting it.

And out of that has evolved an entire ministry because we had a waiting list at Westside for people wanting to get in to these groups because they heard the stories of people that came from the people that committed to the longer-duration thing, the people that committed to the daily activity and habits and community on purpose to become more spiritual influences.

Yes. Oh, so that would be my thing. You know, I had to repent. I had to admit I didn't know. And I had to take a radically different approach.

My mind's gonna be very similar to Brian's. I mean, number one, I would say start with extraordinary prayer and fasting. I didn't bite your whole church to the season of extraordinary prayer. No, here's how we define it: what's your prayer life look like right now? Add one. Then it's extraordinary. It might be a new rhythm or a new type of prayer. And then fasting. And fasting increases our focus on Jesus. It's like a spiritual speed bump. I would call—if I was in a church right now and I was a pastor—I'd be calling the whole church to some kind of form of extraordinary prayer and fasting. And now, a big part of that would be to do exactly what Brian is saying: "Lord, what do we need to repent of in this time? Where's our unbelief? Where we missed you and haven't joined you?"

Secondly, I would be really focused on organizing. If the church is already organized in groups, I would fortify that. I would move in online. If it's not, I would immediately do that. I would—if I have to start by using a phone tree to get everybody there, then I'd use that. You know, but I get them to an online environment in groups. And then the leaders of those groups, I would ask—whatever staff it was, me and staff or whatever—I'd say, "We're gonna do what Jesus did in those group leaders. We're gonna—they're gonna be our twelve. And in this next season, we're going to invest in them."

So the leaders of the groups, you're basically asking them to do and to meet with their small group, but then also to meet with you. And I would take them through something like Followers Made that we developed, or something like Rooted. It's like, "Here's a journey. We're gonna teach you spiritual habits that lead to outcomes and character and calling like through the Spirit, gifts, the Spirit, and I would be training them to say, and really eventually, you need to know I really expect you to be leading others to do the same thing I'm doing with you."

And then in small groups, I would probably say I can do something really simple like Discovery Bible Study rather than some kind of heavy-handed curriculum because that form of Bible engagement is very empowering to God's people, and it teaches simple principles like obedience and reproduction.

You know, so that's what my game plan would be looking like: extraordinary prayer and fasting, getting everybody into a group online, and then developing those leaders. Those become the people that I'm discipling, or my other staff are discipling. And you know what would be happening then? You would have extraordinary prayer and fasting as your foundation into making disciples and developing leaders. Sounds like mobilizing for mission. The audio podcast—he literally just dropped the mic. Like, not literally. That was awesome. I appreciate that. Really good.

From a practical standpoint, because I know, like, obviously Disciples Made—great curriculum. Plenty of elders really rooted. You mentioned, I know there's others out there, and I appreciate some of the openness even on that. And by Disciples Made dot-com, dot-org, Michael's website? Yeah, definitely check that out.

I'm just curious, like, visit. Do you recommend like a one-two-three, one-two-one, one-to-six, like leader to students? What you said thirty percent a success rate? So like, how do you structure the whole meeting and gathering part of the training? What are some recommendations or learnings?

The best groups are anywhere between, you know, eight to twelve. Kennedy's the size is awesome. And then what we do and the way we structure it is we actually divide those core subgroups—those groups—into what we call triads. I know Ravi Galati uses the term D-groups, and other people do as well, or subgroups. I call them triads. You know, we want people to develop the method or the rhythm of having the one-on-one time with God, the one-on-three time where you're the most vulnerable. Like, that's where ultra transparency is developed and required in a disciple's life. And then the one-on-twelve, the team with your own mission together with.

So it's eight to twelve. You could do smaller if you wish. I've done groups of three before, but you know, and they'd only had one triad, of course. But normally I have groups of twelve or thirteen, then have four triads. So we get it all together in one, and it's a weekly meeting for our Followers Made and Leaders Made. It's a weekly meeting of about ninety minutes, and you spend about half of that time in your triad, and then the rest of the time is a whole group. And everybody's been reading the same Bible passages, and then we have extra-biblical reading like other books that are speaking into it. And you're basically discussing each week a primary habit that you're working on. We call it habit outcomes. And then kind of the big idea for the week from the reading along with your Scripture readings. Clean, simple. It's ninety minutes, sixty minutes total time. I'm bad at math right here, but and then in the app, like your other habits, you're like reporting in on the app, and there's a dashboard so you can see how you're doing. And then you're able to communicate back and forth through the app too. So you can comment on my journaling, on my Bible reading. Like, "Hey, Brian, I saw that and praying for you, brother. Can't wait to see you on Tuesday. We'll talk about how that went." You know, so there's online interaction that's supporting the weekly gathering. And you're practicing your daily habits and reporting those in.

Another thing that does step is that we have minimum requirements of those habits. Like, you have to read so often and journal so often because we believe in order to hear from and obey the Spirit—to obey the Spirit of Jesus—you have to do that. That's how we communicate with it. And so the app actually will record your stats as compared to the minimal requirement. So some people are below one hundred percent, some people are above. And group leaders and even the church admins, if you subscribe to this app at the church, the church admin who creates these different groups and appoints group leaders to them can actually see the success of each individual and each triad in each group in their church. They can't see the actual journals. We put a pretty hard line—a really hard line—between that. But they can see the stats. They can coach the group leaders and help people develop proper accountability to get us to those goals of people being able to hear from and obey the Spirit of God.

So that's a pretty robust tool. I love that. And the reporting actually opens up—I wasn't thinking about this question, but you just said reporting. Because coupled with reporting is accountability, because reporting is only as good as the ability for you to use that information to hold people accountable. So yeah, we're in a disciple-making process. I am leading twelve others in that, and there may be some triads and breakups in between, what subgroups. That's cool. But at the end of the day, once overseeing some who's overseeing some, what does what does accountability look like? Because now I'm not working with staff necessarily. I may be working with volunteers who have jobs, who are busy, who have kids, who have science fair projects, and there's plenty of distractions in the world. Even in coronavirus season, there may be less distractions, but we stole my plays to get sucked into Zoom or whatever's on Netflix. Disney Plus is rolling out major motion pictures. Like, there's distractions still among us, right? So what does accountability look like? How do we?

What are some recommendations or learnings that you would suggest? Our working definition of accountability and disciples made is encouraging and empowering people in your triad to keep the goals that Jesus has given you. Like if Jesus has said go and apologize, accountability is to help you do that and help you accomplish it well. Like Jesus is gonna give you goals on the daily, on a quarterly or an annual basis. Accountability is the support and encouragement you need to accomplish those goals. And typically that gets and that has kind of a positive and offensive play and a defensive play.

It's a lot like football, you know? Our Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl champion 2020 have an incredible offense. Hey, but I may never play football again, so you may have that multiple years. I'm please never ever say that again. It's the most discouraging thing I have heard. That's worse than the coronavirus, Jeff.

Stop that. But think about this. They had the same offense actually. They had a better offense perhaps the year before. But because they didn't have a defense, they didn't win the Super Bowl. They didn't even get in. They didn't even get to the Super Bowl. They got beat by Brady and the quarterfinals because the defense could not stand up against them. And we need defense and accountability. But what I've seen, or what I experienced at least all the way up until about the last ten years when I met a guy named Dan Sutherland who provided the best accountability I've ever experienced. I applied and it was the most helpful thing. Every accountability that I had signed up prior to that was a group. I went to the major. I wasn't doing this and I wasn't doing this and I wasn't doing this and they wasn't behind this to be. That's the defensive portion. You only need to rely on your defense if your offense isn't growing. And the better your offense, the less your defense has to be on the field and work. And so that's why we have kind of turned accountability to be more about what Jesus teaching and how do we help get there? If I believe if we get accountability down, we win.

Yeah, like these are the hardest conversations to have. And we a lot of what we do is we coach leaders and our groups to teach people how to hold each other accountable. I don't want to as a group leader be responsible for twelve people. As a group leader, I want to be responsible to help every one of these triads learn to hold each other accountable so that it's a team effort, not a team captain effort. And so we've created what we call a multi-phase accountability conversation that starts with encouragement. It moves to entreating and then finally enforcing. And a lot of accountability is no conversation, enforce. Then there's hurt feelings. They're just lost relationships. So we're really trying to coach people into effective accountability in those three phases of accountability.

Encouragement is phase one. So you get any stand the offense. It's like, hey, this is what Jesus said to you and man has gone well for you. We're praying you can do this, you know? The power of the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, is that working? You stay there. If if someone's dragging their feet, then you get to the entreat. Like, no, you said you needed to apologize to your wife and you haven't done that yet. Well, this is really important, you know? And then the enforce is when it's like, man, we've we've prayed with you, we've encouraged you. You're not in a right relationship with your wife and you haven't been willing to apologize even though you're mistreating her. You need to go do this and Jesus told you to and you said it was Jesus's idea. Just talk to you through that because that's kind of the tone of it. And we're teaching people to like, like Brian said, don't wait till you get to the enforced stage. That's horrible. And if you practice the first two phases, you hardly ever have to get to the third phase. It hardly ever happens, you know?

The other thing I would say it's really important, Jeff, is how people get invited into these experiences. It's a high challenge, a high investment invitation, you know? So you know, Jesus, he looked at these guys that said leave your nets. Like, come follow me. But they knew because of there were biblical culture that it was gonna be this high investment. Like when a rabbi asked you to be their students, it was like, whoa, we were like, this is a this is huge, you know? And so what we do is we invite people into these experiences. Like the followers may will have them read the book, Not a Fan, but Ottoman. And then we get together for a week on information huddle and we'll discuss the book and did it resonate with you? And then we lay out the commitments very clearly. Like, here's what it means. Like you're gonna be doing like a flowers made. You're gonna be reading the Bible five days a week, you know? And you're gonna be doing so many journal entries and you're committing to learn to bless rhythms and practice those. You're committing to do this, you know? You're gonna read these three books over the next six months. It was the reading plan. So you know how much? So we're very clear about spelling out this is what the commitment is. And then we tell them go and pray. I mean, you need to ask Jesus if he's asking you to do this. And then we're committing. So I'm not asking you to do this for me. Is Jesus asking you to do this? If so, then we're all gonna help each other do what Jesus has asked us to do. And so when you invite that way, it brings so much clarity.

When this kind of experience fails, when people make it like, hey, are you gonna be free like would you be free and Thursdays if we did a thing like where twelve of us got together or like we'll kind of learn how to be disciples? You know, like may come to the info meeting. It's like, here's what we're gonna do. And at the end of this thing, you're gonna be ready to teach other people to do this. And we're asking you to ask God if he's calling you to do this. Go pray about for a week and then sign this commitment. You have a lot less problems with accountability stuff. Start right, stay right. Like your how you start it sets the tone for the whole journey. And so we and like Jesus, and this is the last thing I know we got to wrap up. Like when people are inviting others to join, we tell them to pray and fast for a couple weeks about who you're inviting. Like Jesus spent a whole night in prayer saying, Father, yeah, I've had hundreds or even thousands of people that have been kind of hanging around. They're curious about me. They're you know, like show me the twelve faces. Put a light bulb. The twelve people you're inviting me to go on this journey with me. And and we we tell us those are kicking off hours. May do the same thing. A lot of people that I share that kind of front-end process go, none of our people will sign up for that. And what we found is quite the opposite. The people that have stepped up and chosen to lead according to that recipe are blown away by the results.

Here's what I, here's what I've learned because of that. I have learned that people recognize that they really want to see a big categorical difference in their spiritual formation. They may need to make a significant spiritual investment. Like if somebody came to me and said, buddy, I've got a whole new CrossFit plan. You don't have to get out of bed once a week. Let me just kind of put your hand toward our gym and read our manual. Sorry, I mean again. And they've been told that that's gonna give them the the CrossFit result. Yeah, if you just come to the CrossFit gym once a week, I'll give like a little talk about how you can be your body to be amazing. Everybody knows that if you want to see a significant change, you've got to make a significant investment. And I believe that the people of God are waiting for a leader to step up and invite them into something like that.

There are leaders that I've invested in that thought, man, nobody will ever follow me into this. And I said, we'll pray for two weeks and see if anybody. If these guide gives you light bulbs of people to invite and then follow the script. I mean, just follow the script. They don't seem clunky at first, but then you'll start to own it and it'll become yours. And so they they follow the script and people just tear up and say, I've been waiting for somebody to ask me to do something like this. And then there's a catalytic journey ahead of for them. And it's just changing the game. And I just long, long, long, long for leaders in the church to realize that the people of God are waiting to be lifted and invited off of the stands and onto the field. Put some pads on and just start playing. I started making the difference against the enemy. The enemy is taking its toll. And a lot of people want to get in the game. And they're told, you know, the the funnel for how to get there is really really narrow. And and I think Jesus during this corona season, I believe, you know, I believe that he's saying, will you at least open the aperture of the people that you invite onto the field to start making a difference in this world? Because we can't get there with the current model alone, even in this coronavirus season. There's an opportunity to step up.

The lesson that I learned from this is is to start with twelve. And even in the conversations that I've had, I tend to, I'm an extremist guy just by nature. And you guys don't know me well enough to know that. Hopefully we'll connect more down the road. But I'm always like the zero to sixty in two seconds. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Agencies always add a hundred percent, a hundred and twenty percent. The end of the world is coming. I've been saying the end the world's coming for two years. I didn't realize the global pandemic would actually like cause it to. It's the end of the world's not really coming, but at least everybody's now engaging with church online. So I'm still taking that as a win. But but here's the thing is is in my mind I'm like, why aren't we are already at twenty percent in in this scenario? Let's just go ahead and disciple everybody. Let's go, let's go. But there's some intentionality what I'm even learning here is going with going with the twelve, starting with a smaller number. And so I love how there's intentionality on asking on onboarding and rolling them through.

And so gentleman, I you know, I know just to be sensitive at the time, I thank you very much for coming on and having this conversation in the midst of coronavirus season and helping us figure out how what it is to be on mission and maybe some intentional next steps towards that. And so once again, for my heart, thank you for this. And well have information and things on the show notes to help you guys if you want want to get connected to either either Rob Casey, Underground with Kansas City Underground, or Brian over at Disciples Made. We'll have both their their contact and organizational information there. So we're gonna wrap because it's been a great podcast, but we got to move on to the next thing because that's life in the coronavirus season. One day I will come hang out with you. I'm still scheduled to come to this thing in May. I I literally have a plane ticket. I will fly out if they will let me. If they will let me. So we'll just see. But for Rob and that's where I'm gonna see Alan Hirsch and I'm gonna walk up and tell him to tattoos your name my body. Let's go and watch watch him run away. For Rob, for Brian, this is Jeff for the Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on and we'll see you next time. You have a good day.